Supermac (cartoon)
1958 cartoon image of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
"Super-Mac" was a 1958 cartoon image of Harold Macmillan, which became an enduring nickname for him.
With its rather dismissive caption, "How to Try to Continue to be Top Without Actually Having Been There", the cartoon image, by "Vicky" (Victor Weisz) first appeared in the Evening Standard on 6 November 1958. It depicted a caricature of Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister at the time, in the guise of the comic-book hero Superman.
Image
The cartoon was signed "Vicky – with apologies to Stephen Potter", an acknowledgement of the full title of Potter's book of 1958, Supermanship, or, How to Continue to Stay Top without Actually Falling Apart. The figure quickly became a staple of Vicky's output, and "Supermac" (mostly spelt without a hyphen) was widely and enduringly applied as a nickname for Macmillan. Though initially an ironic coinage, it soon rebounded to Macmillan's advantage, becoming an integral part of his image. D. R. Thorpe's biography of Macmillan (2010) was entitled Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan.
In a subsequent cartoon, a cinema named the "Torytz" (after "Tory") was portrayed with posters proclaiming "Supermac - He's terrific - He's stupendous ... A super-colossal-top-production in true-blue colour". The Conservative Party Chairman, Quintin Hogg, Viscount Hailsham, was dressed as a commissionaire presiding over a "house full", while astonished members of the public, queuing for seats at the outrageous price of 12 shillings and sixpence, marvelled at the image of Supermac.
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This entry incorporates text from “Supermac (cartoon)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.